Difficult Changes to Position Qualtrics for the Opportunity Ahead

Qualtrics CEO Zig Serafin sent the following email to Qualtrics employees earlier today:

Team,

We’ve been on an incredible growth trajectory over the past five years. Today, Qualtrics is the leader in XM with more than 20,000 global customers. We have tremendous momentum, and we’re still only at the beginning of our journey.

Against that backdrop, we've now come to a day that is painful, but also necessary to achieve our next phase of growth at scale. We’ve made the difficult decision to eliminate approximately 780 roles across the company. Additionally, several hundred roles are changing or moving locations over the next year. In doing so, we will comply with all local consultation requirements related to these changes.

Every employee will soon receive an invitation to join a specific Zoom meeting where we will share your status and next steps. We know this is a tough day — please feel free to work from home if you can.

These are big changes. There’s no way around it. They will directly impact many amazing and talented teammates and friends who we care deeply about, and these changes will impact all of us.

So, how did we get here?

Rapid hiring was essential to enable our growth up to this point, but it also created complexity that does not support continued growth at our scale. Simply put, the organizational structures, work processes and the way we made decisions previously don’t work for the company we’ve become, or the company we aspire to be.

The changes we’re making—which touch every team at the company—are necessary for us to capture the massive opportunity in front of us given our significant market momentum and the mission critical nature of our XM platform. To get here, we conducted a deep review of every function in the company.

The result is an organizational structure that will enable our teams to work better together, bring new innovations to market faster, and make it easier for our customers and partners to do business with us.

While these changes are important to Qualtrics' future, they are not easy. And we are going to support teammates who are affected.

Employees departing today in the U.S. will be eligible to receive a minimum of 10 weeks of severance based on tenure and level. They will also be eligible for health insurance, Q4 performance bonuses, cash settled vesting, and unpaid wellness and experience bonus amounts. Many talented people are leaving Qualtrics today. I’m confident their skills will be in high demand, and we're also providing career services to help them find their next role as quickly and easily as possible.

Employees in other regions will receive a similar level of support aligned with local employment laws. All departing employees will receive details today from the People team.

To those who are leaving, I am truly sorry. I know this explanation doesn’t make it any better for you. On behalf of the entire company, thank you for everything you’ve given to Qualtrics, and for the chapters you have helped to write. We are committed to supporting you through this change.

To those who are continuing with Qualtrics to write our next chapters, I am also incredibly grateful. These are hard changes. They hurt, and they affect a lot of people we care about.

Tomorrow we will hold two all-hands meetings to accommodate all global geographies where we will talk through these changes together. We will also schedule time next week to delve more deeply into what the new Qualtrics looks like and where we are going. Please watch for those calendar invites.

And to everyone, as we tackle this difficult day together, thank you for your resilience and commitment to our customers, partners and each other. There are better days ahead for all of us.

Zig